D&D Beyond’s Planned 2024 Rules Switchover Upsets Dungeons & Dragons Players

A new controversy is building for Dungeons & Dragons, involving a planned “forced update” to the game’s new rules on D&D Beyond. Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast announced plans for rolling out Dungeons & Dragons’ planned 2024 Core Rulebooks on D&D Beyond, the digital compendium and character builder system used by millions of players. While all existing rules from the 2014 Player’s Handbook (and other older material) will still be available via D&D Beyond’s compendium, all character sheets will reflect the 2024 descriptions for spells, some magic items (namely healing potions and spell scrolls), and equipment regardless of which ruleset they’re using. 

While this will be a free change for all players, many D&D Beyond users are expressing their displeasure about having a portion of the 2024 rules “forced” on them with no way to opt out. This is an especially frustrating change for players in the middle of campaigns, as they may find themselves using functionally different spells between sessions. Over 100 spells in the 2024 Player’s Handbook have been either reworded or mechanically changed, although most of the mechanic changes are upgrades to the existing rules. And while the 2014 rules will still be available in the compendium for players to look up, some believe that this runs counter to Wizards of the Coast’s promise of cross-compatibility between the 2014 and 2024 rules and functionally adds less value to D&D Beyond’s service.

Several top posts on the large /r/dndnext and /r/DnD subreddits are long threads complaining about the changes. A proposed workaround offered by Wizards of the Coast – in which players create “homebrew versions” of the 2014 spells and add them manually to the character sheet – has also generally not been received well by players.

Wizards of the Coast has not explained why they are making this change, especially as other parts of the rules are not being updated in the character sheet. Classes are not being automatically updated in the character sheet, nor species, backgrounds, or feats. Wizards has handled other updates to core character rules using a “legacy” tag that differentiates between versions and is doing so with species, backgrounds, feats, and classes that appear in both the 2014 and 2024 Player’s Handbook. 

Other similar character builder systems are apparently keeping the full cross-edition compatability. For instance, Roll20’s updated D&D character sheet and character builder specifically states that it can support both 2014 spells and 2024 spells.